English 233: Introduction to Western Humanities
- Baroque & Enlightenment

Glossary of terms:

Vicar

A vicar in the most general terms is one who
serves as a substitute, and thus represents
whatever he or she substitutes for. This is the idea that
appears in titles like "vice-president" and
"viceroy." The idea of "the vicarious" is
crucial in several ways in Christianity. The most central
is that Christ serves as a sacrificial substitute for sinful
humanity, in accomplishing the reconciliation (or atonement)
between God's justice and sinful humanity. Secondarily,
under the Doctrine of
Apostolic Succession, the apostle Peter and his successors as
Bishop of Rome function as designated substitutes for Christ as
head of the Church on earth. Beyond this, the pope's
appointees as bishops represent him in administering their
respective dioceses. And the priests under their
jurisdiction thus, in turn, represent (ultimately) the pope.

We meet this aspect of the idea of representation through
vicars in connection with the dispute over indulgences. The
conservative doctrine was that the pope's authority in
indulgences extended only to the remission of temporal
punishments imposed by himself. These "punishments imposed by
the pope himself" were the penitences that were or would
be assigned by priests in their administration of the
sacrament of penance.

This was a way of saying that indulgences could not affect the
sufferings of souls in purgatory (whose punishment was not
"temporal"), to say nothing of those in Hell (whose
punishment was eternal): these punishments were reserved for God
alone. It also meant that indulgences could not remove the guilt
attaching to sin ­ only the punishment due for that
guilt. (Guilt for Original Sin was affected only by
Christ's Atonement in the crucifixion, as transmitted to the
individual soul through the sacrament of Baptism. Guilt for
individual sins ­ i.e., those committed in the course of
one's life ­ could likewise only be erased by divine
activity, specifically, by grace.).